


part of a machine, not a human being

by Anzie (anzie)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arranged Marriage, Character Study, M/M, On the Run, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-22 07:18:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7425313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anzie/pseuds/Anzie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Steve drums his fingers against the seat and says, “Two years ago, you agreed to marry him even though you didn’t know him. Why did you do that?”</em>
</p>
<p>Bucky has always been destined to let go of the people he cares about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	part of a machine, not a human being

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aurilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/gifts).



> This started out as a character study, but I think it's expanded, in my mind at last, into something much more than that. We'll see where it goes.
> 
> All mistakes are mine.

He should not be trusted to play a hero in any capacity; not because he’s completely incapable of saving lives, but because he’s practically destined to let go of the people he cares about when they need him the most. Knowing that about himself, he’ll make a shit husband and an even shittier father – the range of disappointment is vast, from leaving his significant other at the altar to walking by his kids reaching for him from life’s guillotine. Like beasts are drawn to each other, and so he’s got a bad habit of looking in every news story for _that one person_ who jumped ship with no explanation whatsoever. For hours he’ll pore over every word, read between every line dictating the barest details of a newborn found dead in the river or a scorned lover slitting the throat of the scorner.

Bucky once read an article in one of the magazines Loki had taken to leaving around their apartment, about a complete stranger saving a little girl. In the picture the kid looked only about five, six at the most – a cute thing with big fire-lit blue eyes that reminded Bucky of Steve in their youth, her bronze ringlets squished by her proximity to her savior. He thought about the image often, focusing on the details in the nights he can’t sleep under the guise of someone better. He lingers in particular on the tiny fingers closed in evident trust around the man’s collar, his own hands resting on and around Loki’s cold ones between them.

Sometime later he turns the television on to the news channel, and listens to the anchor covering details on some accusation of murder: the moving images depict the same stranger being led through a crowd, his head hanging low on his neck as the media demands to know if he killed his wife and child. Bucky watches long enough to see the half-crazed state of the man’s eyes before pulling the plug.

“You’re drifting,” the blond punk in the passenger seat says, his fingers white-knuckled fists curled around a map on his lap. Despite the tension in his hands, everything else about the muscle-bound kid exudes calm and the sense of righteousness that always catches Bucky a little off guard. “Are you sure you’re good to drive? I can take over for a few hours, you know. Let you catch some zees.” The plastic steering under Bucky’s fingers cracks ominously as he steers the car back on course. The punk pointedly clears his throat; with one glance at Steve’s raised eyebrow, Bucky carefully peels his metal hand back, and forces himself to sit back with a brittle smile.

“’M fine,” he responds tersely around the false grin, glaring forwards out the frosted windscreen as the wipers struggle with the heavy snowfall. His thumb digs into the wheel on a turn, brushing over the indentation left by the finger with his ring.

“Tony said,” Steve starts, in the same tone he uses before launching into another theory about _what really happened_ , “that Jarvis might be able to find the energy signature if they’re anywhere on Earth.”

“You know they won’t be,” Bucky mutters, squinting ahead down the road. He imagines miles and miles of snowy sludge stretching out ahead of them, promising him hours of Steve’s mother hen routine until he gives into his friend’s worrying. Involuntarily, his flesh and blood hand clenches on the wheel. “He’s smart." 

“He will do all he can,” Steve says reassuringly, settling his hulking form back against the seat. Bucky’s eyes flicker to him briefly, still half-taken aback at the dormant strength in his once sickly friend. Steve shoots Bucky a smile, resting his elbow against the window. “Tony doesn’t show it well, but he gives a damn.”

Bucky shrugs one arm, keeping his attention on the treacherous road ahead. He doesn’t think Steve needs to know that Bucky wasn’t referring to Tony at all.

He can feel Steve’s eyes on the side of his face, and resists the urge to itch his stubble. “He doesn’t just care about you, you know,” Steve says. “And that goes for the rest of us. The both of you, you’re one of us. We’ll find him.”

“You think pretty highly of their ability to forgive,” Bucky notes, but not bitingly. “Barton thought _he_ was messing with me; did you know that? For the longest fucking time, Barton thought I was under his control.” Bucky keeps his focus razor sharp on the road ahead, and so feels Steve’s grimace more than sees it.

“Barton has… special issues with him.”

Bucky snorts, shaking his head. “Yeah, and I have special issues, period.”

This time Bucky feels the pained waves rolling off Steve’s damned compassionate soul, and he can tell that Steve’s upset – at the reminder or the usual realization that Bucky holds onto his past with HYDRA still, Bucky can’t tell. He hasn’t personally been able to completely accept the idea that HYDRA remains a stain encompassing his entire left arm, but only Steve acts like Bucky’s still a raw nerve. An apology sits on the tip of his tongue; he holds it for too long and the moment leaves thick silence behind. The only sounds for their ears are of the steady rumble of the car, the occasional _splat_ as a particularly thick and wet snowflake has the misfortune of finding the windshield and Steve’s steady breathing. 

They pass a snow-covered sign presumably welcoming them to upstate New York – at least, Bucky thinks that was what the sign said. It’s perfectly possible that the sign was written entirely in Spanish, but Bucky doesn’t recognize the phrase, ‘ _el ome R ches ew York_ ’. Wherever this safe house is, they had better get there soon.

“I appreciated him, you know,” Steve says suddenly, voice muffled like his own hand is trying to stop the words. Bucky glances at him momentarily, lips tightening at the corners. Steve doesn’t notice, his gaze stuck out the window at the endless blur of white. “I was jealous for a while at what the both of you seemed to share, because you seemed much better with him than you were with me. It felt like I was losing out, somehow. It’s stupid, I know,” Steve says hastily as Bucky’s lips purse to stop himself interrupting his friend. “And it’s not like he made it easy for any of us to like him, so that didn’t help. Though I’m pretty sure half the time he acts like a villain just to get under our skin… He still brought you back from wherever, something I’ll always be grateful to him for.” Steve catches Bucky’s gaze on his glance this time, sad warmth in his eyes.

“Keep talking like he’s dead and you’ll give him a better eulogy than last time,” Bucky says, digging his flesh and blood fingers into the wheel.

The punk shifts in his seat and says unconvincingly, “He’s not. He’s too stubborn to die. You know he’ll stick around if only to annoy Fury.”

Bucky shakes his head minutely. “Not hard to do that,” he says instead of giving into the urge to snap something less pleasant.

“Yeah, you should know, jerk,” Steve teases. “I swear someday between you, Loki and Tony will give him a heart condition.”

“What makes you think he doesn’t already have one, digging you outta the ice?”

“Jerk,” Steve says again, grinning without rising to the bait. Bucky’s lips twitch upwards into half a smile.

“Punk.”

The silence between them is comfortable this time, punctuated only by the car’s revving engine and the heaving wipers. “Hey, turn up here,” Steve says as a desolate gas station speeds towards them. Bucky pulls the car into the lot and looks at Steve, one eyebrow raised. The blond man zips up his jacket and tugs a hat low over his face. “One second.” A blast of cold wind raises the goosebumps on Bucky’s skin as Steve slips out into the storm, and the car shakes a little with the force of Steve’s strength unwittingly displayed on the door. Bucky’s eyes follow Steve as his friend trudges up to the cluttered mart with its harsh fluorescent lights. Steve yanks the front door open and slips inside.

Bucky exhales and sinks a little in his seat. The bandages wound tightly around his broken ribs prevent him from fully slumping low, but the deeply aching muscles of his upper body cry out in unanimous relief. Rolling his shoulders slowly, Bucky drops his head back against the headrest and exhales, hoping to release the tension that has made its home in his body. His spine protests, and he raises his gaze to the car’s roof.

“Where the hell are you?”

He’s sitting up and playing with the radio, trying to find a station with a frequency that cuts through the storm when harsh white light flickers at the corner of his eye. Bucky glances over to see Steve trudging through the snowy path back to their brow-beaten car. Stark offered to gift them with the latest models, but somehow someone – Miss Potts, Steve, Fury – convinced him that they’d be better off staying incognito. Small mercies, but Stark insisted on upgrading the engine the best he could in the half hour it took for Bucky to pack a small bag and destroy all evidence of his existence.

Steve yanks the door open, balancing his purchases with one arm. “Food,” he explains as he slides into the passenger seat and dumps the bag unceremoniously on the backseat. He rustles around for a moment as Bucky finally finds a channel that isn’t purely static; a moment later, something drops in Bucky’s lap. He looks down.

“This isn’t real food,” he says mildly, picking the Twinkie up to read the packaging.

“No,” Steve admits, buckling himself in once again. “But I thought you might enjoy it… and it’s got sugar to keep your energy up.” Bucky doesn’t have to look over to see the earnestly hopeful expression on Steve’s face that says, _Please take care of yourself or I will forcibly take care of you_. With a sigh, Bucky rips the wrapping and takes a bite into the soft roll. The flavor bursts over his tongue, emphasized by the sharp pain in his jaw that dies as he chews. The half-eaten Twinkie gets placed on his lap as he puts the car into gear and steps on the accelerator to pull them away from the station.

Steve all but beams at him, softening the angles of his face to make him seem more like the kid Bucky met more than eighty years ago. Scoffing quietly, Bucky reaches down to turn the radio up. A soulful voice croons, _“Drive until you lose the road, or break with the ones you’ve followed…”_

“Why did you let him join?” The question has pressed on his mind since Loki’s quiet, hesitant words late into the night: _“Your Captain has asked me, officially, to live on Midgard not only as your husband, but your shield-brother, James, and you mine. I have… accepted. For you._ ” He allows himself to ache for all of a moment before steeling himself once more. Bucky sees Steve glance over at him from where he was staring out the window at the passing scenery. Breathing deeply, he settles himself further back in his seat and says, “I know he didn’t want to, initially, and I didn’t think you cared for him – but when you offered, why did you do that?”

Steve drums his fingers against the seat and says, “Two years ago, you agreed to marry him even though you didn’t know him. Why did you do that?”

“The other option was send you.” Steve grimaces, and Bucky shrugs, saying flatly. “He helped me, and I didn’t have the same experience that you did with him. It didn’t feel… It was a mission, and it grounded me for a while – knowing that I could _do_ something for the world in reparation.”

Steve nods slowly, thoughtfully. “I think he caught that from you.”

Breathing deep, Bucky keeps his eyes on the road, feeling the stinging ache of his ribs in the tension of his muscles. Tree after tree after tree speeds by them, and Bucky says bitterly, “Yeah, he’s always been all about making amends. How much longer?”

“Buck. Bucky?”

“ _How much longer_ , Steve?”

“Not too far, we should be there within half an hour, according to this map. Fifteen if you keep stepping on it,” Steve says, maybe pointedly, maybe gently. “Slow down a little, you’re speeding. Are you okay?”

“ _Fine_ ,” Bucky snips, then takes a long, deep breath. “I’m fine.” He looks over at Steve, who’s staring back with concern heavy in his gaze.

“You should pull over and let me drive for a little bit. We’re not that far out.”

“I’m fine.”

“Sergeant,” Steve says, with authority.

Bucky snaps, “I said I’m _fine!_ ”

On the final word, Bucky’s metal hand shatters half the steering wheel, the pathetic plastic casing crumbling to dust in his palm. The car, a sturdy four-wheel, swerves sharply with no control and bears down on the snow-covered railing of the highway. Steve’s arm shoots out to catch Bucky’s torso automatically as the force of ninety miles per hour meets what feels like an immovable object; Bucky with his metal hand grips the side of the door to keep himself grounded and braced for impact. He sees for the fraction of a second a face with sharp green eyes and thin lips stubbornly pressed together in the reflection of the rearview mirror. The lips say, “ _Don’t be an idiot, James,_ ” moments too late.

The car slams nose-first into the snow-covered ground, and keeps going, tossing them both like ragdolls in its metal confines. Bucky’s vision is brown hair and the stars from whiplash; a distant part of him catalogues the bruises from Steve’s arm still somehow pinning him in place, new black and blue to add to his vast collection. The soldier recognizes when Steve is knocked unconscious – his arm goes suddenly, abruptly limp and floppy in the small window of Bucky’s vision.

“Steve,” Bucky tries to say, the word swallowed by gravity and protesting metal. “Steve.” Control is lost to him, his one hand flailing in the air against his will despite his struggle to grip his friend’s arm. “ _Steve!_ ”

_“I need no hero, my dear James,” Loki murmurs, pressing a smirk into Bucky’s scarred shoulder. Bucky’s flesh and blood fingers curl in the nape of Loki’s neck, head turned to breathe him in and watch Asgard’s eternal light through the curtains create patterns across the smooth expanse of Loki’s curved back. Loki’s lips travel up to his ear, whispering almost in regret, “I only needed a like beast whose suffering is akin to mine, and you are the unfortunate creature the Norns have sent through Hel for the purpose of redeeming a fallen god.”_

Bucky’s head strikes the window. To the sound of shattering glass, he has to let both Steve and consciousness go.


End file.
